Adaptation of the international affective picture system (IAPS) for european portuguese

Abstract

This study presents the results of the adaptation of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008) for European Portuguese (EP). Following the original procedure of Lang et al. (1995-2008), 2,000 native speakers of EP rated the 1,182 pictures of the last version of the IAPS set on the three affective dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance, using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). Results showed that the normative values of the IAPS for EP are properly distributed in the affective space of valence and arousal, showing the typical boomerang-shaped distribution observed in previous studies. Results also points to important differences in the way Portuguese females and males react to affective pictures that should be taken into consideration when planning and conducting research with Portuguese samples. Furthermore, the results from the cross-cultural comparisons between the EP ratings and the ratings from the American (Lang et al., 2008), Spanish (Moltó et al., 1999; Vila et al., 2001), Brazilian (Lasaitis et al., 2008; Ribeiro et al., 2005), Belgium (Verschuere et al., 2001), Chilean (Dufey et al., 2011; Silva, 2011), Indian (Lohani et al., 2013) and Bosnian-Herzegovina (Drače et al., 2013) standardizations, showed that in spite of the fact that IAPS stimuli elicited affective responses that are similar across countries and cultures (at least in Western cultures), there are differences in the way Portuguese individuals react to IAPS pictures that strongly recommends the use of the normative values presented in this work. They can be downloaded as a supplemental archive at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental or at http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases.